Agent Counter-Agent

by Nick Carter

  When I wasn't thinking of Tanya, I was trying to reconstruct the past I had almost lost because of the accident. And as I tried to remember, a small incident came back to me. I was running barefoot into a mud house on the outskirts of Margarita. Then I remembered the house was my home, and the pretty, black-haired woman named Maria was my mother. She and my father had both died when I was nine. Not long after that I had come to Caracas, where I'd lived with relatives and studied to become a civil servant.

  There was still something strange about it all. I could remember things about my past, but those things seemed unreal, the mental pictures faded and misty. And when I stopped thinking about them consciously, they just disappeared into oblivion and didn't seem a real part of me. Surprisingly, my most vivid memories were of the few years I'd spent in America, working on a loading dock.

  I spent the entire day in my room. That night Tanya came to see me. She came in quietly and closed the door behind her. I got up from the edge of the cot, where I'd been reading a newspaper about the Caracas Conference. She was wearing a stethoscope and had a clipboard in her hand.

  "May I take your pulse?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  She held my wrist in her small, soft hand. Our eyes met, and she looked away quickly. She made a notation on her chart, then stuck the stethoscope on my chest and listened for a minute.

  "Do you feel any nausea?"

  "No."

  "Any sweating during sleep?"

  "Not that I remember."

  My eyes moved from her full lips over the sensuous curves of her body. Again the tantalizing image flashed through my mind — Tanya lying nude on a sofa. Her next question seemed psychic.

  "You said you recalled an… intimacy between us, Rafael."

  "Yes, I did."

  "Would you mind telling me what you remembered?"

  I smiled. "No. It was you. On a sofa."

  Her lovely blue eyes avoided my look. I took the clipboard and stethoscope from her and dropped them on the floor. Then I pulled her to me gently. I kissed her, and she responded.

  "You did sleep with me, didn't you?" I asked quietly.

  She tried to pull away, but I held her. "Rafael, you're not a lover," she protested. "You're a revolutionary. You haven't had time for women."

  "I must have found time at least once," I reminded her.

  Her eyes found mine. "Yes, at least once." She seemed to be remembering. "Just before the demonstration at the American Embassy. I brought a message to your apartment, and you asked me to stay."

  "And we kissed, and I held you close like this," I said, running my hands slowly over the entire length of her body.

  "Rafael, please…" she protested weakly.

  I unbuttoned her uniform to the waist and slipped my hand inside, holding her tight against me. I caressed her breasts and felt her nipples harden at my touch.

  "Rafael…"

  We were kissing again. She stopped resisting and returned my lass with a sudden, tremendous passion, her body straining urgently against me as my mouth explored hers. When the kiss was over, we were both breathless and hungry for more.

  "Oh, God, Rafael," she breathed.

  She slipped out of her uniform and let it drop to the floor. I watched as she pulled her panties down over her long, smooth thighs. She went to the cot and stretched out, her body trembling with excitement. I undressed quickly and lay down beside her. My fingers and lips moved over every inch of her hot, quivering flesh.

  Suddenly she tried to pull away, but I held her tight. "What am I doing to you?" she cried. I smothered her words, probing deep into her mouth with my tongue. She began to respond again.

  I didn't know what she meant, and I didn't care. All I could think about was her ripe, warm body. She moaned with desire as I rolled over on top of her. Her thighs opened for me, and I could feel her fingernails raking my back. I thrust brutally into her, and she cried out with pleasure. Then everything was darkness and urgency and mounting, uncontainable passion.

  Six

  I was strapped in the chair again, and the room was completely dark. They had given me another injection but this time there were no cajoling voices. There was only the drug working its way into me. Tanya and Kalinin were not even in the room.

  They had mentioned something about the "last phase." I'd heard them say it in Russian, and somehow I'd understood, though I had no memory of ever having learned Russian.

  As I sat in the chair, an image appeared in the darkness before me. It was the President, and he was giving a political speech. He was just twenty feet away from me, gesturing as he talked. He was saying things that upset me very much. I broke out in a cold sweat. The euphoria gave way to intense anger as the President's words became more and more abusive, louder and louder. His face slowly warped and became hideously distorted. In a minute the face was all that was left of the image. It began expanding, growing larger and uglier as the venom spewed from his twisted lips. The face was so close I thought I could reach out and attack it.

  I heard a scream in the room and realized it had come from my own throat. I had reached out savagely for that awful face, trying to tear into the flesh with my bare hands, clawing at it with my fingers.

  But I couldn't reach it. The scream had been one of complete frustration and abject despair at not being able to reach the awful face and destroy it. In another minute the voice died away, and there was just silence as the contorted face continued to move in front of me.

  Suddenly Tanya's voice came out of the darkness. "This is your enemy. This is the man who stands between your people and freedom. He is a vile, ugly animal, and he feeds on the carcasses of his people. You have always disliked and feared him, but now you are consumed with a desperate, violent loathing. You hate him more than you have ever hated anyone or anything in your life."

  I thought my chest was going to explode with the repulsion and hatred I felt for the twisted face. I kept remembering the President's vile words, and I clenched my fists until my nails tore the flesh of my palms.

  Finally the image disappeared into the blackness and was replaced by another. This was not familiar to me at first, then I remembered it from the newspaper. It was the American Vice-President. He was speaking in English, but I understood him perfectly. He was explaining that he would work closely with the Venezuelan government, that the United States would offer more economic and military aid to keep the Venezuelan President in power. As he spoke, his face changed. His eyes became more and more evil, and his mouth spewed forth hideous, detestable words.

  When the lights finally went on, I was covered with sweat. The technician unstrapped me from the chair and took me back to my room. The drug and the overpowering emotions had completely drained my energy. My legs were so weak that I could hardly walk.

  Back in my room, the technician helped me onto the cot and then stared down at me. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  "I think so."

  "This is all necessary for your mission." He said kindly.

  I took a long, deep breath. "Where is Tanya Savitch?"

  "She is busy on the project."

  "I have to see her."

  "I'm afraid that is impossible."

  I looked up at him. He was a young Venezuelan, the man called Salgado. His face looked honest. Maybe because of the frankness I saw there, I blurted out a something I hadn't even realized I was thinking.

  "Am I really who they say I am? Is all this really necessary for the people's revolution?"

  His eyes narrowed on me. "Do you doubt it?" he asked anxiously.

  "I… I don't know. I guess not. Sometimes I think I am going crazy."

  "You are not insane. In fact, you are quite well now." His voice was soothing.

  "How long have I been here in the clinic?" I asked.

  He hesitated as if wondering whether he should answer me. "You were brought in by a comrade the night before last."

  "And when will I be ready to leave?"

  "Today."

>   I propped myself up weakly on my elbow. "Really?"

  "The last phase will be over later today. You will have a few more orientation sessions. The next one will not be very pleasant for you, but it will be over before you know it. It is an absolutely necessary part of your preparation for the job at the conference."

  "What is that job?"

  "They will tell you later today."

  Suddenly the door opened, and Dr. Kalinin walked in. He scowled at the technician. "What is it? Why are you still with señor Chávez?"

  "He wanted to talk for a moment." The technician sounded frightened.

  "Get back to your work," Kalinin said curtly.

  "Yes, of course." Salgado turned and left the room.

  I watched Kalinin approach me. I didn't like the idea that the Russians were in charge here and that my own countrymen weren't allowed to speak with me. A Venezuelan should be in control of his own revolution, yet Kalinin had treated Salgado like an inferior.

  Kalinin gave me a stiff smile. "I am sorry to take Salgado from you so abruptly, señor Chávez, but he has duties elsewhere. Are you feeling well?"

  "Just fine," I answered.

  He took my pulse and didn't say anything for a while.

  "Very good. You should rest now, and we will come for you after lunch. You have a rigorous session coming up."

  "Do I really get to leave this place late today?"

  My question took him by surprise. But after a brief pause he answered, "Yes. Tonight you will be ready."

  "Good," I said. "I hate confinement."

  "So do we all," he said deliberately. "But we must make sacrifices for the good of the revolution. Isn't that so?"

  I nodded. Kalinin smiled tightly and left.

  I fell asleep for a while. Suddenly I heard my own scream. I sat upright on the cot, soaked with perspiration and shaking all over. I ran a trembling hand over my mouth, staring at the opposite wall. It wasn't like me to be afraid — I knew that much about myself. It must have been the drug they were giving me. I'd had another nightmare.

  I'd seen the ugly faces from the dark room and heard the harsh, evil voices. It was all mixed up with images of myself. I was stalking through a dark alley with a Luger in my hand. I turned a corner, and suddenly an enormous, warped face loomed up in front of me. It looked like the President's and yet wasn't his — it was a deformed face hanging suspended in the blackness. I fired the Luger over and over, but the hideous face only laughed at me. The mouth opened, threatening to engulf me. The long, sharp teeth were coming at me. That was when I'd screamed.

  After a light lunch I was taken back to the room with the machines — the orientation room, they called it. The technician had warned me that this session would be different, and he hadn't been exaggerating. Tanya met me in the room as the technicians were strapping me into the chair.

  "This will be unpleasant," she said. "But it will be over before you know it."

  "I thought of you earlier," I said. "I asked for you, but they said you were too busy to see me."

  The men finished strapping me in and went over to one of the machines. They hadn't used that one before. It had a small control panel, but there were dozens of blinking colored lights on its counter.

  "What they told you was true," Tanya answered.

  "Will I see you again after I leave here?"

  She looked away. "Perhaps. It all depends on the outcome of the mission."

  "I don't know anything about the mission," I reminded her.

  "You will shortly."

  They used different attachments this time — a wired metal band across my chest and a new headpiece. Tanya saw to it that everything fit properly and then left the room.

  They turned the lights out, and I saw more pictures in the blackness. The images were even more real than the ones I'd seen that morning. They hadn't given me an injection this time, but I knew that the effects of the morning dosage still hadn't completely worn off.

  The President appeared in the room. He was walking through a crowd, waving and smiling evilly. As soon as the image appeared, the headband began doing something to me. An awful pressure started building up in my head, and the pain became almost unbearable. As I watched the images move, the agony increased. I struggled to get free, opening and closing my mouth and squinting my eyes hard against the pain. It just kept getting worse till I thought my head was going to explode. A scream welled up in my throat. A man separated himself from the crowd and ran toward the President, swinging a huge machete. The blade connected, decapitating the President, and his head went flying into the crowd, spewing blood everywhere. People laughed and jeered.

  The pain disappeared, and I felt only the sweet emptiness of physical comfort. The President was dead, and the world was saved from his tyranny.

  I hoped the session was over, but it wasn't. Another scene filled the room, with the President making a public speech. The pain came again, and I braced myself against it, coiled inside to steel myself against it. But it overwhelmed me. This time the awful pressure in my head was accompanied by stabbing chest pains, as if I were having a heart attack. I heard myself scream, but the pain didn't go away. A man pointed a pistol at the President and blew the back of his head off. The pain subsided immediately.

  But again the room filled with images, this time of the American Vice-President. He was riding in a black Cadillac in an official parade, and I knew that the Venezuelan President was in the car in front of him. The Vice-President was wearing an expensive pin-striped suit, gesturing to the crowd in an imperialistic manner. The pressure came again, but this time there was no tightening of the chest, just the terrible pain in the head. In a sudden explosion of smoke and debris, the Vice-President's car was demolished by an unseen bomb, and everybody in the automobile was killed. A second violent explosion reverberated in the room, and the Venezuelan President's car disintegrated. The pain was gone for good.

  I slumped in the chair as they unstrapped me and disengaged the apparatus. Dr. Kalinin was beside me, but I didn't see Tanya.

  "The worst is over," he said to me.

  When he was through prodding me with his stethoscope, he helped me out of the chair and walked me down a corridor to an ordinary projection room. The far wall had a screen built onto it, and there was a booth at the back of the room for the projector.

  Kalinin slapped a loaded Luger into my hand. I looked at it dully, still numb from the brutal session. It was the gun I'd been shooting in my nightmare.

  "The drug has worn off by now," Kalinin was saying to me, "and your reactions to the various stimuli during this part of the preparation will be quite natural. You will keep the gun, and you will do whatever you feel like doing."

  I just stared at the big automatic. It was a German gun, I knew, but somehow I associated it with the United States. While I was still trying to figure it out, the room darkened and the film began. These were real pictures, probably taken during the last couple of days at the preconference meetings. The film showed the President walking down the path in front of the Palacio de Miraflores, with the American Vice-President beside him. There were cameramen all around them, and the President was talking casually with his American visitor.

  As the figures on the screen appeared to move toward me, an overpowering feeling of hatred rose in my chest, and I became aware of an uneasy feeling in my head, a feeling of great discomfort. The pain increased with the feeling of complete revulsion. I didn't see the screen anymore. The men walking toward me became very real. I raised the gun in my right hand and pointed it at the two figures. I aimed at the President first. I was trembling with hatred and pain, and sweat was pouring down my forehead. I squeezed the trigger. The figures kept walking toward me, undisturbed. I was furious. I fired the gun over and over again, and black holes appeared in a tight pattern on the President's chest. In a minute I was pulling the trigger on an empty chamber. Still the two figures kept coming toward me. I hurled the automatic at them, and then in a fit of rage, lunged toward them
. I hit something hard and fell heavily to the floor.

  The lights came on, Kalinin helped me to my feet. I was breathless and exhausted. Now that the film was over the pain and anger drained away from me.

  "Very good," Kalinin was saying in a sugary voice. "Excellent, as a matter of fact."

  "I want… out of here," I said to him.

  "All right," he said. "We shall not need you until later today, when you will have your final session. You may return to your room."

  They took me back to the white room with the cot, and I lay down heavily. It seemed as if several agonizing, sleepless days had passed since I'd gotten up that morning. I fell asleep for a while. But this time there was no nightmare. Instead, I had a very detailed dream of Tanya. She was nude and in my arms. The warm softness of her body was engulfing me, consuming me with desire. Every sense was aroused — I heard her lovely voice and smelled the intoxicating scent of her perfume. And throughout the dream, in the heat of her passion, she kept saying to me, "I am sorry, Nick. I am sorry, Nick."

  I couldn't figure out why she was using that foreign name, but I didn't bother to correct her. I didn't care what she called me. Nothing really mattered but the hot, demanding flesh writhing beneath me.

  I sat up suddenly. I thought about Tanya and her use of the foreign name. Nick. What did it mean? I'd dreamed about a Luger, then Kalinin had shoved one into my fist. I wondered, as I lay there waiting for them to take me to the final session, whether there wasn't more to these past couple of days than I knew, more than these people were telling me. But they had to be legitimate. They knew all about me, all about my philosophies and my work with the movement. We were all working for the same cause, and I had to trust them.

  When they came for me, they told me it was early evening and I would be released within a few hours, after a good meal. They took me to the orientation room but didn't strap me into the big chair. Instead, they asked me to sit in an ordinary chair beside Salgado. After a short time he left and Tanya and Kalinin came in with a third man, a Russian named Oleg Dimitrov.